Edgar Hilbert and Patricio H. Guillen (“Get past partisanship, fix health care,” Aug. 14) began their guest commentary with a fair observation: The disruptive tactics of town hall detractors to Washington’s health reform initiative don’t (at least fairly) help their case at all. Point well taken. As to the substance of their points beyond this, logic went downhill rapidly.

First, that we – conservatives and progressives – are all in the same boat in facing disease and injury requiring health care has nothing to do with the equality in value of our respective approaches to the problem. To “put aside our partisan differences” as they advocate is exactly what we must not do, unless those differences are meaningless, which they most assuredly are not. The extent to which government gets involved – and how it does – makes a huge difference as to how health care costs and availability play out.

Their goal – greater affordability and accessibility – is, the way they seem to mean it, akin to saying, “let us have somebody else’s cake and eat it, too.” They decry insurance companies that don’t cover certain medical procedures or that turn away high-risk customers, but isn’t that “cost savings”? What the authors call “denial of services” is a misnomer; it is denial of reimbursement for those services. If those insurers cover all medical bills and all applicants, who pays? Should a person get more than what he or she pays for in premiums chosen?

Again, “somebody else” ought to pay, in their view. Not to do so, in their final analysis, amounts to our nation’s having “given in to greed.” Isn’t part of greed lusting for things you haven’t earned and demanding someone else ante up?

Yes, there are ways to cut costs and increase coverage, but it would involve changes Hilbert and Guillen would not like.

Suffice it to say that for the government to “enter the free marketplace” to “compete” with private enterprise is a ticket to disaster, and it is an oxymoron besides: non-public companies do not have the power to tax or make law. Inevitably, now-viable insurers would fail, and those that stagger on would eventually need that accursed treatment: bailouts.

At best, bipartisanship will give us no better than a mediocre plan, and it will prove irreversible. Shutting up what appear to be the correct voices on one side of the debate will give us a disaster that will make the current situation look like utopia.

RICK DE PRISCO Twin Peaks

Signs of improvement

There has been a lot in the paper lately about graffiti in San Bernardino. I agree it is a terrible problem, but I also think it is worth noting that something seems to be changing, for the better.

Recently, as I was driving to work in the morning, I was disturbed to see that someone had tagged the retaining wall at Arden and Foothill. The very next morning, the graffiti was gone!

Only a few days later, I noticed that the cement wall at the wash over Foothill Boulevard had been tagged. Again, just a day later, that graffiti too had been removed. Before, graffiti seemed to stay up for days or even weeks before anybody got to it. Whatever the city of San Bernardino is now doing is making a big difference. Keep up the good work!